


This Love Will Keep Us

by aestheticly_cat



Series: And I Love the Way You Say You're Scared to Hold Me [3]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Andy | Andromache of Scythia Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Minor Injuries, Nile Freeman Needs a Hug, prose, she also gets one, she gets one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27970271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aestheticly_cat/pseuds/aestheticly_cat
Summary: In which, art is observed, dangerous swimming occurs, and kisses are had.Alternatively: Andy and Nile can’t stay out of trouble for three seconds. For once, though, it works out in their favor.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: And I Love the Way You Say You're Scared to Hold Me [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2039214
Comments: 5
Kudos: 58





	This Love Will Keep Us

Nile loves Malta.

She loves Malta even more when she’s seeing it through Joe and Nicky’s love-worn eyes. They drag her down every side-street and back-alley, stopping at every fresh market and art exhibit, strolling arm and arm through the city of their love. Joe spins grand and probably highly exaggerated stories about the places they pass, and Nile throws her head back and laughs as each one becomes more ridiculous. Nicky just looks on in that quiet way of his, pressing kisses to the back of Joe’s hand from time-to-time.

There is no urgency in them like this, she notes, as they spend an entire afternoon at one particular exhibit. 

Joe and Nicky (even in her thoughts she cannot separate one from the other) leave her to browse on her own, and after what must be hours of aimless wandering, she comes to stop in front of an oil painting tucked away in the corner, almost out of sight. The longer Nile observes it, the more clear it becomes that this is what they wanted her to find. 

A woman, carved out on the canvas in gilded hues of roseate, is kneeling on a rocky precipice, flowing brown hair knotted and twisting down her back, as she reaches her hands out to the Tartarean sea below. Only half of her profile is visible, and Nile braces a hand against the wall in order to keep her legs under her as she takes in the sharp curve of Andy's jaw, the slope of her nose; lachrymose eyes searching for something just out of sight. Her mouth is open in a scream of anguish so vivid that Nile hears the echoes of it travel through time and space to reach her; this is a memorial, this is a eulogy. 

This is a prayer in the only way Joe knows how sometimes. 

Nile staggers out of the exhibit and onto the sunlit sidewalk. Joe and Nicky find her hunched over, forehead pressed to an alley-wall, jaw clenched as she cries for the woman she loves and for the woman who had come before her. Her new brothers say nothing, but they flank her on either side, and their presence stems the waves of agony, pushes them back, and drags her back to shore. 

That night, Nile doesn’t dream of an iron-wrought coffin. She doesn’t dream of death and fury and grief. 

Instead, she dreams of two warriors pressed side-by-side in the middle of the night, and as the starlit sky illuminates them, they lean in for a kiss as old as the universe. They have all the time in the world.

She wakes up with tears on her cheeks. For who, she’s not sure she knows. 

  
  


—————

  
  


Andy takes her underwater diving two weeks later. 

“You’ve been dreaming about the ocean almost every night,” Andy says without preamble when Nile balks at the edge of the cenote. “Are you really going to sit there and tell me you’re not afraid?”

Nile doesn’t have an answer for that, so she shrugs on the gear, and follows Andy down into the deep below. 

Nile tries and tries not to think about the significance of this. 

The cave system is wide-open below, and Nile notes how the sun that breaks through holes eroded in the ceiling throws aurelian light over everything, painting her and Andy ethereal.

Andy swims with steady strokes, but Nile catches her looking back to make sure she’s still with her more than once. She lets each glance wash over her like a balm. 

An undetermined amount of time later, Nile points out a strange fish with yellow patches intermixed with cerulean, nudging Andy with her elbow to show her, and a rumbling crack resonates through the cave. 

Nile looks up and sees a piece of the ceiling break off and come rushing toward them, parting the water like air with its weight. She reaches out for Andy and pulls her, an attempt to drag her out of the rock’s path. There’s a split second where horrified grey-blue eyes meet brown and then the debris strikes both of them, spinning them away from one another. 

Nile shrieks a twisted version of Andy’s name, spitting out her rebreather in her terror, as Andy’s hand is ripped from hers. 

The water blooms with blood, hers or Andy’s she isn’t sure, blinding her as she runs frantic hands over her body trying to find her rebreather. Her fingers tangle in the cord, and pull it back to her mouth. 

‘ _Please, please, please_ ,’ she chants in her mind, not sure who or what she’s praying to, desperately pushing away excruciating images of a mortal Andy trapped at the cave floor, gasping and dying or already dead. 

Nile fights through the pain that is her broken arm and crushed shoulder, as she swims slowly, awkwardly, back towards where she and Andy had been moments before. The water is murky, churned up from the impact, and she struggles to see past a few feet in front of her. 

There’s no sign of Andy. No sign she was ever there at all. 

Nile’s panic threatens to choke her more thoroughly than the water ever could, and she spins in helpless circles hoping for a glimpse of Andy; a clue of where she might be. But, aside from floating detritus and a few cautiously returning fish, she’s alone. 

Her mind conjures up Quynh’s face twisted in agony as she dies over and over, and thinks that she’s beginning to understand a modicum of her pain. 

Nile’s chest heaves as she sobs, having just enough presence of mind to grit her teeth to keep from dislodging her rebreather once more. Her tears gather in the bottom of her goggles. 

She allows herself exactly ten seconds of despair, of fear so acute it cancels out the physical pain of her healing body, before she takes a steadying breath and kicks towards the surface. She’ll find a ledge carved into the limestone wall of the cave to get a better vantage point from. If she can’t see Andy from in the water, maybe she can see her out of it. 

Her head breaks the water’s surface and she hears it. 

Hears _her_. 

“Nile!” Andy’s voice is distorted, cracking on every letter, as she screams. “Nile, please!”

Nile’s relief is so great she almost sinks back into the water under its weight. She spits her rebreather from her mouth. 

“I’m here! Andy, I’m here,” she shouts back, twisting to look around the cave for the other woman. “Where are you?” 

There’s weighted silence, and then a splash from just around the corner. A body breaking the surface.

Goddamn that woman.

“No! Andy, don’t! The ceiling could still be unstable,” Nile pleads, already moving towards the continued sounds of what must be Andy not listening to a word she’s saying. 

She turns the corner and sees Andy a moment before they collide. The impact knocks the air from Nile’s lungs, but she can’t find it in herself to care. Not when Andy is pressed against her warm and safe, and not dying at the bottom of the cave. 

Andy clings to Nile, long legs wrapped around her waist, arms flung over her shoulders, and Nile struggles for a moment to keep them both afloat. Andy makes no sound, but Nile can feel her lips moving against her neck. A prayer, she thinks. 

Which is odd, as she’s fairly certain Andy doesn’t believe in anything or anyone to pray to. 

Nile moves them back towards the wall, and finds her footing on an underwater ledge. She wraps her arms around Andy, bringing one hand up to press against the back of her head. The other runs itself over the length of Andy’s back, her arms, down her side, checking for wounds. She finds nothing but a small tear in Andy’s suit and a shallow cut that is barely bleeding. 

Nile breathes for what feels like the first time in days. 

“It’s alright, Andy. I’m okay. We’re both okay,” she soothes, knowing in her bones that Andy is feeling some combination of her grief for Quynh, and her fear of losing another of their family to a similar fate. 

Andy doesn’t reply, just clings tighter, pressing her face closer against Nile’s throat. They sway in the water as the minutes pass, hours maybe, before Nile breaks the silence once more. 

“I think this whole ‘face your fears’ exercise may have backfired a bit, boss. No hard feelings, but I will be saying I told you so at a later date,” Nile jokes quietly, an attempt to cut through the tension that’s been building. 

Andy stiffens, and Nile is opening her big, _dumb_ mouth to apologize, for making light of something so painful when—

“I’m sorry.” 

Andy’s voice is hoarse, raspy in a way that makes Nile wonder how long she’d been screaming for her before she’d resurfaced. How long had Andy clung to the ledge, crying out, believing that Nile was lost to her? 

Nile thinks back on Joe’s painting that hangs in her favorite gallery in Malta, and needs no help seeing the similarities, in drawing the conclusion. 

“No— Andy, don’t.” Nile’s shaking her head in denial, refusing to allow Andy to harbor this ill-begotten guilt for one moment longer. She moves one of her hands to cup Andy’s jaw, and tugs gently until the other woman untucks her chin from her shoulder. 

“This wasn’t your fault. Shit happens, okay? We’re both fine,” Nile continues, softly, ducking her head to try and catch Andy’s lowered eyes. 

She makes a mental note to not mention the broken arm and mutilated shoulder any time soon. Maybe never. 

Andy just stares at her collarbones, gaze hard as flint, but doing nothing to hide the tears that are building up, threatening to spill over. 

Nile flounders for words that will make everything okay, that will take the pain in Andy’s gaze from her and extinguish it, that will strangle the life from it so it can’t hurt her anymore. She comes up empty. 

Just as she’s about to suggest they make their way back to their clothes, and their _phones_ so she can call Joe and Nicky, who just so happen to be Andy experts, Andy’s eyes snap up to meet hers for the first time since they’d been reunited. 

She looks determined, as if she’s finally come to a decision.

Nile gets a fraction of a second to appreciate the absolute fire that blazes in her eyes before Andy’s mouth comes down on hers with enough force to split her lip. 

The tender flesh heals underneath Andy’s tongue, and Nile decides that she doesn’t hate the taste of blood so much when it’s intermingled with the taste of Andy. 

Nile shakes off her stupor, and gives as good as she gets. She knows that if Andy senses herself being handled with anything resembling caution that this will be over as quickly as it began. 

Andy turns them, keeping their mouths locked, until she’s backed Nile up against the wall, and suddenly there’s nothing in the world to Nile outside of Andy’s mouth and hands and tongue. 

She’s imagined this happening a million times, in a million different ways, but now she knows that no fantasy could ever beat this pleasure-tinted reality. 

Andy tugs her bottom lip in between her teeth, just enough to sting, as if she can sense her mind wandering and will have no part of it. 

Nile pinches her side in retaliation, and suddenly they’re laughing, pressed close enough to breathe in one another’s joy. Nile leans forward and clacks her teeth together, pretending to bite her back. 

“Cute,” Andy hums. 

Nile beams. 

Andy reaches up and runs her the back of her hand down Nile’s face, something sobering in her gaze as she studies her. 

Nile clutches her tighter, unwilling to let her step away and say something dishonest, something like “ _this is a mistake_.” 

It’s not, and now they both know it. Nile will never forget it, not for as long as she lives and breathes.

“I can’t do it,” Andy says, finally, something like shame in her tone. “I can’t do it again. I won’t survive.” 

Nile’s heart constricts for a moment in hurt, trying to find a way to not let such a simple phrase destroy her, before clarity strikes and she exhales in a rush. 

Andy doesn’t mean she can’t do this, the two of them molded together, lips still swollen and slick. She means she can’t lose Nile like she could have lost her today. 

Like she’s already lost Quynh. 

“You won’t,” Nile’s voice is certain, unwavering, and she meets Andy’s eyes head on. “I promise you that you won’t, Andy.” 

Andy smiles, twisted and a little bitter. 

“You can’t promise that. No one can.” 

She doesn’t move away, despite her words. If anything, she holds Nile closer. 

“Maybe not, but I can promise that I’ll do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen,” Nile says, stretching up to brush her mouth against Andy’s once more. “I can promise that I’ll do whatever it takes to come back to you. Can that be enough?” 

Andy kisses her again, tasting like sea salt, and it feels like a promise, like a vow, like absolution. 

Against all odds and everything to the contrary, it feels like forever. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all enjoyed this installment! I’m thinking that I might eventually work my way up to a full-length fic about these two beauties. Let me know your thoughts! 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
